Not so happy post

***WARNING: The following post may serve as unwelcome birth control. If you are planning on becoming a first time parent any time soon, please proceed with caution.

I'M TIRED. Too tired for an exclamation point there even. I don't do well without a lot of sleep. My sister, Lisa, doesn't sleep and handles it very well. She has two crazy kids running around and another on the way but the lack of sleep doesn't phase her all that much. Me, I'm not the same. I really like sleep. I like it a lot. And I miss it. Half my day consists of wondering how much I'll sleep at night and daydreams of the next time I'll be able to really sleep in, like when our kids are off at college. I have not been this deprived of sleep since Ethan was a newborn. Then it was easier because it was expected. But at six months? He has been out of whack for at least three weeks now, and I'm feeling desperate. I feel pretty OK once morning comes and it's light out, but getting up so often at night, and for so long, is taking its toll. You start to get a little insane. I play a game with myself every night when I get up. I start counting the hours of sleep I've had. When it's 2am and I've really only slept a couple of hours so far, I get a bit panicked. Then I try to figure out how many hours of total sleep I will get if he falls asleep soon. Every time I go back to sleep and then wake up again, I look at the clock and can't believe how little time has passed.

Then there's the anger. I get mad at Ethan for not sleeping. I want to throw things. I am tense and know that only makes things worse but I can't help it. Then I get mad at myself for getting mad at my adorable six month old whose sleep issues are very likely my fault. I second guess everything I do and think of a new theory every hour of the day. Perhaps he's not sleeping well because my voice is hoarse and when I try to sing him the song I sing him before naps only half the song comes out in a man voice. He's confused. Or...maybe all the flashbulbs from the photographer yesterday afternoon gave him a headache. These are silly theories, I realize, but I am desperate for an answer that probably simply doesn't exist.

He is having major problems simply getting to sleep, even in the middle of the night when all it used to take was a little bit of nursing and then back to bed. As soon as I put him down, he wakes up and is wide awake again. So I rerock him until he's asleep and wait a long while before trying to put him down again. Usually, on the the third try, I can get him down. But by then I've been up for an hour already.

Additionally, he seems to have awful gas lately so now I am trying to cut dairy out of my diet. It's unlikely he would all of a sudden have an aversion to dairy in my diet, but I am trying it out anyway. But it's not easy. What is there to eat? No milk with my oatmeal? No cheese? No ice cream??? That's madness.

Luckily, the during-the-day-rational part of me knows that it will not be like this forever. But try telling that to the middle-of-the-night-zombie part of me.